


the captain of the tenth division

by youlovelythief



Category: Bleach
Genre: Character Death, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 12:57:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7464147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youlovelythief/pseuds/youlovelythief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rangiku and insomnia, after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the captain of the tenth division

Rangiku Matsumoto does not sleep.

  
If she sleeps, it’s just that zombie bitch.

  
It’s just ice and her ashes falling into his white hair, and Rangiku has had enough of nightmares. There is more than enough work to fill her waking hours, more than enough visits to pay to those who wish to mourn. She finds herself with Hinamori most often; she had not quite returned to the hospital, but the vice captain had not returned to her bunker either. Instead, as a sort of middleground, Hinamori had moved her bedroom almost in its entirety into her office at the Fifth Division. Her futon remained neatly folded in the corner, and her desk was slowly melting into piles of paperwork adorned by her cute, colorful trinkets and odd-ends.

  
Although, by the time Matsumoto comes to knock at the vice-captain’s door, the futon is already rumpled on the floor, having been used and disused continuously for some hours. Hinamori will always be sat at her desk, squinting in the candlelight at insignificant paperwork to stay awake. Matsumoto folds to her knees beside the other woman, sake bottle ever-present in her hand when the sun goes down. They sit like this until the sun filters in through the screens on Hinamori’s door. Rangiku has stopped wondering which one of them needs these visits more.

  
If Rangiku sleeps, it’s just his funeral and standing in formation with her division under the glaring hot sun. It’s just her being disgusted by her sweaty uniform clinging to her body, pondering the meaning of its black satin in the face of the urn present before her. _Black_ , she thinks, blindly thanking whoever had just shaken her hand in condolences. _Black because we are death gods, or black to be ready for a funeral at any moment?_

  
Kyouraku appears at her door one night, carrying a new captain’s robe. It is a year after the war, but her visits to Hinamori have not decreased. His office in the Tenth Division remains untouched.

  
The commander smiles and gently sets it down on her desk. “I don’t care if you haven’t got bankai yet,” he says. It’s wrapped neatly with a sash to match her pink one, a piece of light, wispy fabric blue like a stark winter sky. “There is no one better to have this.”

  
“I have bankai,” Rangiku slurs quietly, sliding her finger beneath a loop of the bow. It is the last secret of hers to leave his confidante.

  
She pays Nanao a visit the next day, to thank her for the sash she now drapes over the shoulders of her haori.

  
One night, Rangiku really does try to sleep. She drinks herself two entire bottles deep and flings open the doors to his office, and if it’s the alcohol or just the must that gathers in a room with the unforeseen absence of its occupant, then Rangiku doesn’t particularly care—the place still smells like winter to her. That dry, clean scent he had toted behind him everywhere permeates his office even in the twilight humidity of a Soul Society in the throes of a heat wave.

She pivots around on her heel and falls backwards onto the sofa facing his desk, the same way she’d been doing it for dozens of years. This time, her haori billows out on either side of her, softly floating down to settle over the cushions and armrests like snow.

  
Rangiku passes out more than she so much falls asleep, but the effect is the same.

  
That zombie bitch’s laugh grates like glass in a wound, bouncing off the collapsing walls of the Seireitei, and Rangiku tries to scream his name but vomits up blood instead.

  
The world is white and red and crashing down around her ears, but she stretches out her hand into the hot, thin blood that coats both the ground and her mouth, and her fingers scrabble across the cement until they find purchase. She drags, vomits, drags, vomits, drags, vomits, drags—endlessly, until she finally gets his name past her throat in a deformed, mutilated version of it at the same time her palm slams into his shoulder, twisting that fucking Quincy uniform into a fist to pull herself up to his side.

  
And Rangiku had screamed for help, had flung her dull reiatsu out to the whole of Seiretei until the medics came, had clutched his body and chipped away at the ice until her fingernails had chipped away too, and _still_ they had not _listened!_ She'd _tried_ to tell them, oh, she'd tried—screaming and sobbing and tearing her uniform, trying to scramble back towards her little captain. Pushing the medics away from her and towards him, towards his frail, icy body, the limp form of it still partly-encased in Hyorinmaru. She'd seen what that zombie bitch had left of him, the blood reddening his jaw, the tatters of that disgusting quincy uniform. They'd pulled her from him and tried to heal her first, and Rangiku had howled like the ash cat that prowls through her dreams.

  
Haineko still appears sometimes, when Rangiku dozes off over her paperwork. She will land softly on her shoulder and curl around her neck, purring, her vague form shifting in and out of focus.

  
"Rangiku," she murmurs, "use my bankai. Hitsugaya would not want you to be like this."

  
"You don't know what he'd want," Rangiku mutters, shifting to the side.

  
"I am your sword," the ash cat quips indignantly. "I knew him just as well as you. I hurt every bit as deeply as you do." Her blue eyes softening, Haineko pushes her face against Rangiku's cheek. "We have lost a very dear friend, Rangiku."

  
After a moment, the captain's hand comes up to stroke the cat's back and hold her to her chest.

  
"If you won't train, then let's visit Orihime. Talk to the girl," Haineko pleads. "Let her heal you. You need someone to talk to, Rangiku."

  
In a swirl of ash, the zanpakuto will float above Rangiku's desk, whiskers twitching, her blue eyes wide, mirroring the captain's own. "We will mourn, but we will train, Rangiku. We will be strong."

  
"We will be drunk," the blonde woman replies every time, dispersing Haineko with a fling of her hand.

  
Sad, lonely, grieving Captain Matsumoto, who drinks too well and too often.

  
She does not _want_ to sleep.


End file.
